The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1887-02-24
A N FRAUDS
Unvarnished Truths About
sssicty', at the National Capftal. 4

80 Unvarn1shed Truths About
tssicty'' at the National Capftal. 1,
Although there is a great show and
any amount Of social position and
rank in Washington, there is not an
equal amount Of wealth to support it in
two-thirds Of the cases. The majority
Of those who shine in society and are
the most prominent and irrepressible
are dependent on Government salaries,
and it takes close management to make
them suffice for plain living and a place
In society. Many of the Senators are
wealthy; but they are the only ones as
q class, who have great wealth; and
the moneyed people, as the r.ch winter
residents who come only as private cit
liens are called, are easily counted.
Each season Washington runs over
with heiresses. and penniless girls, and
widows who come to Washington as to
q great matrimonial market, and wear
themselves half outyin the struggle to
get into and keep lin society. Rich men
never come to hunt for wives. in this
modern Smithfield, and when a New
York millionaire did take a Washing
on bride it was a pretty grill in strait
ened circumstances, who had never
been known in the society army and
navy germans and legation balls.
Young army and naval officers are the
most mercinary lot of all, and they in
Variably save up their leaves of alb
enc to spend them in Washington
during the winter months. One mis-
creant in epaulets once Mortified some
married ladies by saying: 1T pays us
poor fellows on short commons to pass
: a in Washington sending bo-
quets and spend all our money on the
girls, for all the rich girls 20 there,
and their fortunes are only equivalents
for the social position that we can
give them.
Sometimes these gay spectators get
terribly sold, as not every papa that
passes for a millionaire is really one,
aud heiress is a name very easily tick
et&> to girl who dresses we'll. Re-
Gently there has been a notorious case
of II of these uniformed fortune
hunters getting the supposed heiress
after a Ipng siege, only to find too late
that the fortune was all in the air, van
ished. gone up like smoke. To balance
this there is the case of another young
officer, who. although engaged to a
great heiress now in Europe finishing
her French and buying her trousseau,
longs to be released from those golden
letters to marry, d penniless orphan en-
ployed in one of the departments here.
People who believe in the old-fashioned
love stories admire and sympathize
deeply with this crooked course of true
love, but his brother officers think the
distracted youth a plain and simple
~lunatic.
A joke is often told on one very
punctilious army officer, who in the
course of frontier experiences found
his ex-laundress the wife of a Congress-
man. The laundress' rise and the
growth of her husbands fortune could
not bring the ladies of the fort to rec
ognize her, and this particular officer.
although now General, could remem-
Der some stormy scenes, when, as a
poor young Lieutenant, he had scored
and upbraided the laundress about mat
tiers of starch, buttons and plain mend
ing. She fell in his way next at some
celebration or event where her husband,
GIc OuSTcSStudu, was III one OF the
front carriages of the procession, and
she, the gorgeous figure, on the plat
form crowded with the distinguished
people of the day. The General in his
uniform was introduced and her voice
and face sent his memory chasing
backwards. just about as the identity
was becoming clear her talk went on to
the winter that she had just passed in
Washington. Her comments on socie-
.sty and people at the capital woundu p
consolingly with this: 20, yes! I found,
too, that army officers go in quite good
society at Washington" When this
got into army gossip it furnished as
much amusement as a remark that
d rose above the hum of voices at
a dinner party here when the same
woman, who looked sixty and wore a
raven-black wig over a face scanned
with a hundred wrinkles, simperingly
..said: "Yes. / mean to wear baby blue
until am thirty = Washington Cor.
st. Louis Globe Democrat.